AHPC XII: Stalingrad Apartment Complex

28mm Soldat shown for scale

This 28mm scaled apartment complex building occupies a 1 foot square tile and has 5 seperate (and detachable) floors. It was 3d printed* in small sections by Alan on his filament printer last year, after which I then spent some 30 odd hours glueing, chopping and drilling to give it that pristine Urban Combat look. Quite a labour of love in which I took my own modicum of injuries!

WIP build pics here: http://tasmancave.blogspot.com/2021/10/october-hobby-roundup-terraintober.html

 Each floor was modified to make it is quickly removable to allow whole skirmish games to be played just in this building alone.

The building breaks down into five separate floors - I added framing to the underside of each so that it doesn't inadvertently revert to this state mid-game...

I wanted a balance of dioramic destruction vs playability, so tried to portray a holdout building in which defenders have cleared the worst of the rubble to keep their fighting positions effective. It took quite a bit of time to do this sensibly (and of course with obligatory research of actual Stalingrad buildings - Alan's high standards require nothing less than primary source evidence, which makes one really lift one's game!). All this took well over a month so I then quietly packed it away so I could enjoy painting it during the Challenge

Undercoated in black, I then got my airbrush into action (with coaching assistance - thanks Marty!) to finally start adding pigment to the project. I really wanted to bring some colour to the table amongst all the usual urban grey wreckage, so went with a timeless brick red vibe with some coloured internal walls. I added floorboard beams and other detritus from scrap balsa. Final layers on the brickwork were traditional drybrush method, while internal floors and walls were stippled to give a bedraggled look.

Junkers-eye view of the building

Overall, this construct netted me 140 points for the painting challenge. 

https://thepaintingchallenge.blogspot.com/2022/01/from-paulog-stalingrad-apartment.html

* commercial stl files by WOW Buildings, here: https://wowbuildings.net/

Hail Hydra! (Red Skull was my AHPC VII Character bonus round submission :-)